Voters Don’t Want to Fund New Jails? Just Rename Them “Inmate Processing Centers”

A jail by another name smelled a little sweeter to voters in Harris County, Texas, who have been reluctant to approve spending money on housing prisoners.

Six years ago, local officials put a bond measure on the ballot to fund a new jail, only to watch it get rejected. So they tried again…but instead of asking for funding for a jail, politicians called the project a joint city-county “inmate processing center.”

The bond measure squeaked by on Election Day this week, by a margin of only 456 votes (out of 224,126 ballots cast).

A pre-election poll indicated voters would strongly back the bond this time at least in part because the word “jail” was avoided.

“Maybe it’s because we called it a joint inmate processing center as opposed to a jail, but that’s what’s on the ballot,” Rice University political science professor Bob Stein told The Bond Buyer. “And more importantly, voters support this regardless of their perception of crime.”